The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 67. Lloyd Moves In

One.

Last night I had a dream. 

I was back in college.
Again.

My professor wanted me to read a paper 

I'd written on pacing

and structure.  

My printer was broken;   

I told him I couldn't. 

Then, while another student was reading,

I looked around the room and found 

a fine poem hanging 

on the wall, literally.

The words were three-dimensional--very three-

dimensional. 

A peer of the poet 

was up there on the wall also, in a fluorescent 

orange sweater. 

Very tiny she was, 

in a skirt and high heals, climbing 

around on stainless 

steel

letters.

It didn't seem to bother anybody.  She walked out on this one long, rambling line about drinking a very bright green Lime Rickey soda. Her florescent orange sweater looked amazing against the 

neon soda bottle popping 

out of the poem 

because of placement. 

(The fact that it was bigger and had neon light circling the soda bottle periphery like a shoreline around a tropical island didn't hurt much either.)

Anyway, she was out there dancing around in her bright red heals on SODA in NEON at the end 

of a very long line, when she knocked the "A" 

off and fell

on her own A. 

Everyone laughed. 

She was embarrassed; 

I felt bad for her.   However, 

I also knew I had my moment.

In the commotion, I'd noticed what my peers hadn't. As that stainless steel "A" had tumbled and the girl in the orange sweater and cherry red heals tumbled with it, the whole poem had slid

SKIWAMPUS

"That!" I said, standing assertively, 

pointing to the now skiwampus poem hanging ever so skiwampusly 

on a pin 

point

Period.

"That is pacing gone wrong before your very eyes, and 

You didn't even notice it!

A poem exists on placement. It either is or isn't, depending on where you place your images and break 

your lines.  If you turn a poem into prose, it says almost nothing.  It's not about what 

you say, but about how you go about your business of saying it.  

Poetry is gardening with words".

I thought I'd made my point. The girl's poem on the wall had once been beautiful. Now it was in shambles. All because some careless soul had knocked off an "A" with her cherry red pumps.

The class just rolled with laughter and went on about seeing Nancy--that was her name, I guess, as that's what they called her, over and over, as she tumbled, and tumbled again and again in their minds, that action just repeated ad nauseam, and they loved it.

Meanwhile.  

No one paid any attention to Imelda, the shy brunet poet in the back corner, or her rather remarkable poem with that wildly long line about drinking a green Lime Rickey soda from a bottle almost neon when glazed in the morning sunlight as she, the poet, stood, pop bottle in hand, and gazed out her second story apartment window on an old brick Victorian world shimmering in light as the actual old Victorians went about their business as if the world was made instead of asphalt, Walmarts and dumbass college students who don't know how vital even one letter can be, when placed right

 or wron

g.  Where am I goin with this?

Two.

I don't remember it this way, for I don't remember having a phone.  However, Lloyd insists that I did.  If that is true, one night I received a call.  Lloyd was on his way.  His wife Maxine had kicked him out of the house.  If you know anything about my brother, you know he did absolutely nothing to deserve this.  Still, it was what it was.  One day he was part of her life.  The next he was gone like a letter in a marquee of an abandoned movie theater blown off on a windy day or a neon "A" in a BAR sign blacked out on a very black night.  Red B.  Black space.  Red R. 

I was in shock.  Although Maxine had started to treat me differently, I wasn't aware there were any problems between them personally.  Although Lloyd and I normally had no secrets, out of respect for Maxine, my brother had not shared his marriage problems.  I had been locked out of part of his world without even knowing it.  When I found out, I knew that he'd done the right thing.  Yet, I was stunned--both by his dissolving marriage and by the fact that Lloyd had kept secrets from me.   

I really liked Maxine.  Although it was hard on me when she became the most important person in Lloyd's life, I was happy for them.  I thought she was the best thing that ever happened to him.  I wasn't losing a brother; I was gaining a sister.  Even after Lloyd showed up at the apartment, I still believed she wasn't capable of something so cold.   I didn't know much about relationships, let alone marriage, but I assumed they'd had a fight and that they'd work through it.  Yes, Lloyd was welcome to stay awhile.  Then he'd get that call and he'd say, "I've missed you too."  Things would go back to normal.

Three.

I have this problem.  I'm still working on it.  Whenever anyone is down, I take it personally.  I don't allow those around me the necessity of falling apart.  I somehow feel I'm to blame when the shit rains down on them and splashes a bit on me.  It's quite selfish really.  Sometimes you need to be there for others, to contain their pain for them.  You can't do that if you're always worried about your own standing.

Four.

Lloyd, of course, showed up not his usual self.  He hated my apartment.  It was too small; the bathroom faucet leaked; the toilet had hard water stains.  He wanted to get out of that damn cell I was living in.  That was his reality, not mine.  So, I'd take him on my long walks through Juarez.  He didn't really like walking for hours either, at least not to begin with.  I should have understood that.  I should have welcomed it.  He'd certainly put up with a lot of dissatisfaction from me when I was a teenager.  Many nights, he had to drop whatever artwork he was working on so that we could go to the dollar movie or to the mall to buy a CD.  He and my friends were always having to deal with my restlessness.  I was always pushing everyone around me to do something more entertaining. I was always seeking escape from the void gnawing away at my gut.  He always accommodated my dysfunction.

Yet, in Lloyd's time of need, I wasn't similarly accommodating.  I'd finally found the life I wanted--one where, when I wasn't at school or working, I walked El Paso and Juarez for hours at a time, taking it all in, and then came home late at night, and in the silence of my little apartment, which I loved, sat and wrote whatever came to mind.  I was finally discovering who I was, really touching that void for the first time, and all of the sudden Lloyd shows up very unsatisfied and needing a lot of attention.  I thought I'd found myself, but I really hadn't.  I was like a Buddhist monk who becomes irritated at a homeless man interrupting his meditation by tugging on his robes and asking for alms.  Still, that's where I was.  To be honest, I'm not sure I've progressed much beyond that.  The problem is that there is some part of me that accepts the crap I'm receiving when others are understandably lashing out as really being directed towards me instead of just a manifestation of their own pain.   I can't fully be there for them because I'm always assessing my own safety.  It's always about me.  

A wise man would have been able to say to himself, "Lloyd doesn't give a rats ass about my apartment one way or the other.  This isn't about me; it's about Maxine.  Just let him whine and complain until time begins to heal his broken soul."

Five.

We soon moved to another apartment.  It was much bigger.  On the surface, it wasn't much nicer.  Both had spectacular views, but both had old sinks, old toilets, and old tubs.  My first apartment was actually better maintained.  It had been remodeled and had new windows and new carpet.  It was sealed from the elements and had the fresh smell of a new home.

Yet, the move was important.  Lloyd chose the apartment.  We definitely needed more space.  More importantly though, Lloyd needed to take over.  He needed to assert himself, to have some say in the shape and space in his life.  He'd let Maxine run the show.  For her career, they'd moved wherever she needed to go.  He'd accepted her mom, who lived with her, as his own.  He stayed home and painted, his career carefully scheduled around her daily to-do lists: dog, dishes, errands, etc.  He'd sacrificed his world to become part of hers.  That probably would have all seemed worth it had the marriage worked,  but it hadn't.  Lloyd needed to establish himself again in the world.  My apartment simply wouldn't do.  A new place was more than a space; it was a symbol.

As dumb as I was, I did get that much, and the truth is, I liked it too.  It was on the fifth floor and had spectacular views.  It was unfurnished, and Lloyd got busy building a table, a bench, and then  purchased two nice chairs, and restarted his life with me.  

Six.

I've gone back and fourth on whether or not to include "Lloyd Moves In" in my book.  At first, it didn't seem to be my story to tell.  Then, I had that dream last night about pacing, and I realized, This has got to be here.  The pacing of my book simply will not work without it.  

Why?  That's not important now.  This section just needs to be here, like a period, a place holder, until meaning can be built up in what follows.  Its placement is like large granite stone above a trail in the high Sierra.  You see it there, above you, looming with significant shadow, looking like it's ready to roll.  You pass below, knowing that even after you pass by it, you will look back now and then, and see it still, even from a distance.  

There are markers in our lives, stories that must be told, even if not directly ours, simply because our path winds its way under the weight of them.

Everything is about pacing.  Placement.

Whether or not we have a choice in that positioning or not.  Lloyd dealt with his rock the way he had to.  Later, I would have my own.  Later, I would look back and understand the day Lloyd moved in better than I did when I was first under its shadow.

The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 66. Leslie

This morning, well before 6:00 a.m., I searched through Dreams by No One's Daughter and Natural Histories by Leslie Ullman looking for a quotation with which to start this piece.  It seemed only proper as it is about her.  Yet, as I've worked over each draft, she has stubbornly refused to enter the room.  It took me some time to figure out why, but I did it.  It's so simple:  I don't know her.  So, this morning I got up thinking I could attach a bit of her to this piece by finding the right quote from one of her poems.  Although I entered many, walked around, stayed a while even as I watched the clock  (My daily writing block is a bit confined by my life),  I didn't really seem to find anything that shouted, "Begin with this."  However, since I do keep coming back to two lines from "Running",  perhaps it would be dishonest to leave them out altogether, even though I don't know exactly how they will connect with what I have to say:

Sometimes I run in Louisiana
where I've never been

Leslie Ulman impacted me as a writer more than any other professor.  As her writing style is very different from mine, it wasn't an affinity for voice or structure that affected me so.  She was just a damn good teacher.  She opened up the world of poetry to her students two ways:  her writing workshops and her exploration of the standard works of contemporary poetry.   All of my peers loved her workshops, as did I, but they were less enthused about her Contemporary American Poetry class.  However, that is the class that impacted me the most.  

I'm not sure why the public understands that fields like medicine, engineering, or astrophysics require diligence to enter and comprehend the full glory of the content they explore; yet, that same public seems to think that fields like art and literature mean nothing if someone without a high school education doesn't immediately "get" the work.  No, your two-year-old cannot paint like Jackson Pollack.  You just think he can.  And no, it's not the work that's lacking.  No one is trying to pull the wool over your eyes.  Staff at art museums across the country dedicate their lives to making it accessible, but you've got to be willing to be present.  Art is not something you stand before and have an argument with without even getting to know each another.  Not that there aren't con-artists in the arts; there are.  However, without putting in the effort to learn the vocabulary, one is not qualified to make that call.  

Just because I don't understand quantum physics or can't meditate or do yoga doesn't mean they are empty worlds with nothing real going on inside that space.    

I'm not an elitist.  Sometimes the simple truly is the most profound.  My favorite writer is Bill Bryson, who is as accessible as anyone.  Other times, though, beauty is complex.  Just because I don't understand black holes doesn't render them insignificant.  Just because E = MC² doesn't mean much to me, doesn't mean it has no meaning.

When it comes to poetry, most of my peers were lazy.  They were happy enough to explore their own poems, the poems of each other, or even the poems of some of the more accessible poets like Lucille Clifton or William Stafford.  However, they were unwilling to put in the work required to enter the poems of someone like Robert Lowell, even with an extraordinary guide like Professor Ullman.  Her writing workshops demonstrated anyone can write well with a competent guide.  Her literature classes demonstrated that few have the discipline to become poets.  At the time I went through the program, there was only Michi and I.  Several other students had the natural talent, and there were a few fine fiction writers in the bunch also, but only the two of us had the drive to push ourselves beyond what came naturally.  

I too lost that dedication along the way, and only recently started to write seriously again. Yet, I was trained well.  One thing Professor Ullman did that facilitated entry into the poems we studied was that she allowed us to respond to a poem in one of two ways:  we could write a standard literary analysis, or we could respond to the work through our own work, not so much to mimic it as to dialogue with it.  I went back and forth between the two methods, but it is the latter method that really pushed me forward as a poet.  

Story Built from Galway Kinnell Bricks

God, I had been working so long,

until midnight I think,

but it felt like three.

I closed up shop,

dragged my weary eyes up the street to Village Inn

for a needle of coffee in each socket.

And then to,

there among the fat men with shiny badges

read Galway Kinnell,

it was like a dream, dark growing tall,

two small boys bearing cornstalk violins

--I swear I saw them!--

outside the Circle K across the street.

Above the Franklin Mountains the moon ate itself out.

Two young lovers sat on the curb,

their tennis shoes in the dusty gutter.

Headlights and hum zipped past

like lion eyes after zebra.

The young just sat there, heads trailed

by the beginning of necks,

shivering in the guarantee they'd be bodies,

flesh rivered by blue erratic wanderings

of blood, saliva passed back and forth,

hands running stone saint smooth stone.

I laid down my tip and lit

a cigarette, a small fire against

the loneliness that I knew would rain

when I tore open my bed like a polar bear

and climbed in and closed her up

to sleep in blood 

and pain.

The words in italics are Kinnell's, the ones not, mine.  Through this collage method of using bits and pieces of other people's poems to write off and respond to, I was able to get out of myself and expand my options when returning to my solo work.  The process, was, I suppose, something like playing jazz.

Lucille Clifton

is woman,

real woman,

so sure of her big, shouting,

swinging, mighty, magic, spell-spinning hips,

she doesn't have to kick me in the balls

to make me listen.

She needs no combat boots.

She's got roots

and God and babies and girls and boys

and collard and kale and kinship and roaches

and green trees and tree talk

and nations of wood and nations of words,

words galloping out of her mouth,

crazy and wild,

wild and root,

speaking loss,

deep, black loss,

cutting greens to give back life,

forgiving Daddy to get on with life,

calling the kids home from the movies:

"The picture be over.  Stop making some babies

and raise them!"

Her black breasts pressed against the windowpane

every inch of her woman converting me to myself, man,

making me run through the streets naked, crying in tongues

while she bellows WOMAN!

and invites me to join in the song and dance

in spite of Zora Neal Hurston's

Joe Starks (that bastard!)

telling Janie,

"Somebody got to think for women and chillun

and chickens and cows.

I god, they sho don't think none theirselves."

In that poem, I no longer even know what words are Clifton's and what are mine, and it doesn't really matter.  The voice is clearly hers.  That was the point of the exercise:  to expand my options as a poet so that I wouldn't always respond to my own previous lines in the same old predictable ways.  I believe it worked.  I'm a pretty versatile writer and can take on multiple voices even in the same piece.  I'm not sure how mature or significant I am as a writer; that is for others to determine.  What I do know is that I was good student, and that I had a great teacher, Leslie Ullman.  Those are prerequisites for most, if not all, good writers.  Artists are not born in vacuums.  They use and expand a language handed down to them.  It is a mentoring system.   Leslie Ullman was a master mentor, and for that I'm grateful.

That's why this post seems a bit odd to me, even disjointed.  Leslie Ullman the teacher is here, but not Leslie Ullman, the person.   Perhaps that is how it is with the best teachers.  While teaching, it's not about them; it's about pulling out the best in their students.

Of course, I do have memories of Leslie.  I did attend a few parties and social events where she was there.  I remember well how she carried herself, how she could command the attention of an audience, even college students not much more mature than high-schoolers.   I could describe her looks.  Bright blue eyes that danced with light but unlike some eyes didn't necessarily invite you to enter.  Not necessarily guarded--just enjoying the space between self and the outside world.  I realize now, I don't really know her, even as an acquaintance.  I know some shop keepers in town much better.  I don't rule out writing about anyone or anything, but I don't feel any particular need to write about them.  Whereas, I do feel any memoir about my time in El Paso must include a section on Leslie Ullman.  It's not that she never shared anything personal.  She did.  It was just that her class wasn't about her; it was about us.  She allowed herself to all but vanish in that setting so that we could grow as writers.

She did the same when she discussed the work of Anne Sexton, Mark Strand, or whatever poet we were studying.  The poems entered the spotlight full-bodied, as she, the presenter slipped back into the shadows.

Yet, because she taught me how to write, how to really read, how to do what I was put here on earth to do--explore life through words, I love her.  That is how it is with mentors.  Their greatness comes by not drawing attention to themselves but by bringing out the best in others.

For a time I was an ungrateful student.  I got too caught up in living life.  Like many of my peers were not willing to give the poems we studied their full attention, I was not willing to get up at 5:00 a.m. to write, and more importantly, to stick with something when it became hard.  I don't know if I'll be able to get this book published or not.  I'm not sure it's the type of book that can generate any interest outside close friends and family, but I do know this:  I'm almost there; it's almost done. I have almost completed this journey.  Soon, I will be able to say to myself, "I have written my first book".  That will make the next one, whatever it is about, much, much easier.  

Now, I understand why I was drawn to those two particular lines of Ms. Ullman's:

Sometimes I run in Louisiana
where I've never been

She allowed me to run in places I'd never been.  The poems she opened up and made accessible to me grew inside me and became part of me.  The way those writers handled words became ways I could handle words also.  I do not know if I'll get this book published, or even the next one, or the one after that.  I do not know if at some point many people will read my words or if my writing will vanish soon after my body.

But I do know this:

I can run with writers;

I am one of them.

But I wouldn't be without Leslie.  I'd write, I'm sure.  I did that before her class.  But I'd be like that hobby painter who picks up a paint brush now and then to paint a scene of the daisies in the back garden without ever having stood before a Claude Monet, an Edward Hopper, a Richard Diebenkorn, or Jackson Pollack and uttered "Damn!" totally amazed at possibilities formerly unimagined in his own work.

To grow, you must run in place's you've never been.  It helps to have a good guide.  Leslie Ullman was among the best of them.

References

Brown, Steve. "Lucille Clifton." Sell-Outs Literary Magazine 1993: 32.

Ullman, Leslie. "Running." Ullman, Leslie. Dreams by No One's Daughter. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987. 28. 

The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 65. Driving Along the Rio Bravo

A Grocery Store on Mexico 2, Southeast of Juarez, Jan. 1992, mixed media diorama, Lloyd Brown

I don't know why I so often need to start my writing for the day grounded to where I'm physically at, but I do.  Perhaps place is my coffee, my starter for, my transition to, something more.

So here it goes:  It's 7:12 a.m., on a brisk Sunday morning in November.  The sky behind the juniper blobbed ridge outside my front window is a frosty, pale blue, with a yellow tinge towards the bottom, right above the juniper-splotches.  The crooked, knobby arms of an oak shatter the frosted blue like an untended crack in a windshield.  It is 33 degrees outside.  The heater hums.

Soon I will put hot water on the stove for a cup of Pero, my replacement for coffee.  Then, somehow I will have to get myself from here to the other side of the border, over 841 miles away, and to a time over 25 years ago.  Such is the work of a writer.

Perhaps what will transport me is the light.  Both places have that same unfiltered light that ignites and sculpts ridges and ranges with stunning clarity.  The low-angle winter light was even more intense there than here, for the ranges were far less vegetated, and light on stone told most of the story.  

On the Mexico side of the river, known there as the Rio Bravo, even the houses were stone--concrete block covered in plaster.  I have an image in my head now.  It's one of Lloyd's dioramas, A Grocery Store on Mexico 2, Southwest of Juarez, Jan. 1992.  I may not be able to take credit for the artistry of the work, but I can take credit for its existence.  We were clearly on that drive because of me.  I had to share my little slice of Mexico with my brother, as I will do here with you.

The painting is of a line of three connected buildings along a two-lane highway on a bright winter's day.  In the left hand corner there is an old rusted, red pick-up from the 50s next to an elm and a telephone pole.  To the viewer's right is a small haystack of old bales starting to erode at the edges.  Then there is a do-it-yourself combination car port and patio with an elm growing up the center of it.  The beams sag with the weight of time and of limbs laid across them for shade.  The house itself is white stucco well-aged with a flat roof and the stains of time, all tinged with that stark yellow horizontal light.  A homemade ladder, like what you'd see on a pueblo, leans against the house, as does an old screen door.  Electrical wires connect to long metal poles attached to the façade.  Below them rust stains trail down the stucco.  Old faded curtains adorn the two front windows.  The place appears to still be inhabited, although once can't be certain.  There is no car out front, and the screen door appears to be leaning against the front door, which would make entry difficult.  So perhaps, it is abandoned, although probably not for too long.

The building to the right, however, is another matter.  It is but a rock shell.  The roof is gone, and so is the back wall, and even part of the front.  It is made of rough stone.  

And then there is a store with a what appears to be red Coca-Cola sign on the white stucco façade and a matching red Coca-Cola machine on the right side of the front door.  I don't know if the store is open or not, but there is a mud-covered green Chevy pickup from the late 70s out front with two guys sitting on the raised tailgate.  Perhaps, someone ran in for drinks and snacks.  Or perhaps the old store is now a residence, and someone left the truck running and ran in for his wallet.  

Beyond these three isolated buildings are fallow fields and desert ranges, that though not included in the cropped surface of the painting, I know are sculpted by that same stark light.

This is the Mexico I know and love and spent hours upon hours exploring.  To be honest, it's not all that different on the U.S. side, but different enough that I was never satisfied with my knowledge of my world ending at the river.  Perhaps, in that regard, I was different than most Anglo-Americans living along the border.  They go to Juarez for business, for dinner, to take family members for a night out when they come to town.  Many of them even know the language.  I didn't.  But they did not know the streets and highways the way I did.  I knew those country roads almost as well as I know the county roads outside my hometown.  They are burned forever into  my memory.    I know the fields around El Porvenir almost as well as the fields in this valley.

Most of the Mexicans I met along the way didn't understand that.  Neither did the U.S. Border Patrol.  I always hated being asked upon return, "What were you doing in Mexico?"  I don't know why I always felt the need to be honest, but I did.  I'd say, "to take photographs".  They seldom believed me, and so my car would be searched very thoroughly almost every time.  If I had said, "to get drunk and laid," they'd have let me sail through unquestioned, unsearched, for that's what they expected of a single male my age crossing the border.  However, the border patrol agents were not the only ones to question my motives.

I remember once I was traveling from Juarez to El Porvenir along Mexico 2, and almost all by itself, among fields was this swimming pool.  If I remember right, it was near Guadalupe Bravos.  It amazed me to find such a place out in the middle of nowhere, and I have to admit some snobby U.S. attitude in me thought especially in Mexico.  The light was right, and it was beautiful, so I stopped.  There were some girls in their early teens diving, and I went up to the fence to take some pictures.  Just as I was aiming my camera, I heard, "You like girls young?  I can get you some."  I turned around and saw some guy in his twenties smiling a slimy, knowing smile.

I did, without doubt think the scene, including the girls, was beautiful.  And I was, without doubt, yearning.  Yet, he had totally gotten the wrong idea.  What I was looking for was a connection to my youth, for a way back home to my rural roots.  I felt alone, lost.  Though in an entirely different country, in a land where I didn't even know the language, somehow those country roads south of the border felt more like home than all of the years I spent living in Dallas.  The hay fields there could have been the hay fields out by the lava ridge west of my home town, and that pool, though in a field instead of the town square, called to me like the pool of my youth.  I wasn't seeking sex that day.  I was seeking something quite the opposite: innocence.   At twenty-something, I already felt very old and world-weary.

No one could know that though.  Both the Border Patrol and the Mexicans could only assume what they knew well from experience:  United States looks south of the border with ill-intentions.  No gringo crosses the border seeking for a route, if only psychologically, home.  Thus, I was relieved when a friend told me of a route through Sunland Park, New Mexico that avoided the official border crossings altogether, which although illegal, saved me from the shakedowns on my way back to the States.  I took it often, an outlaw in deed, but one only seeking peace and wholeness in a foreign land.  I'm not sure why I felt I couldn't find it at home, but I didn't.  Stubbornness,  I guess.  Too proud to admit that I needed Dry Creek like air, too proud to admit that I just wasn't built to make it anywhere beyond the fields, juniper and creek bottoms that were woven into the fabric of my soul from an early age.

The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 64. George's Way

I don't know why I'm struggling to write about George.  It should be easy.  He's a complex and fascinating individual: a tinkerer, a thinker, a strategist, an entrepreneur, and a guarded risk-taker.  He's creative, yet analytical;  he's scientific, yet open to mysticism.  

Perhaps that is the problem.  George defies all labels.  Writing, by its nature, communicates through stereotypes.  Even the most realistic novel is based on typecasts.  It's how the writer gets the reader to fill in the iceberg below the surface, to feel the unwritten story.  Writing uses shorthand to quickly connect experiences between the writer and the reader, to draw "Yes, I know that, I've felt that too" by compartmentalizing and condensing experience into archetypes.

Thus the problem:  George is like few others.  There are no short-cuts to developing his character.  No matter what I write here, I will fail to capture who he really is.  And unlike when I was writing about my friend Michi, there is no magic moment when I realized I was standing in front of greatness when I was around him, although I was.  Sometimes, I thought him a damn fool, and I know he thought the same about me.  We spent many nights drinking and arguing over politics.  Some nights these debates became quite heated, but usually they ended with us understanding each other better.  Often, we were driven by the same gnawing void.  One night we strapped little pieces of paper with notes to God to rockets and fired them towards Him to get his attention.  I wanted Him to assist with my love life.  George just wanted some solid answers to his usual question, "What in the hell is going on here?"  Actually, we never fired the rockets, but as we sat at his table drinking and discussing the plan, the vision became so real that even now I have to remind myself that our juvenile outburst towards God never actually occurred.  

However, I do remember us laughing hysterically:  God, you don't hear us, well how about this?  We'll shoot our prayers right up your almighty nostrils!  The God I believe in was probably laughing also, in an empathetic, enlightened sort of way--slightly-hurt, but also understanding the need for His spirit children to challenge authority, the way a father laughs when his teenager is making fun of his dad's age, belly size, receding hairline, taste in music, or inability to use technology effectively.  At least I hope that's what God was doing.  If not, I'm going to have some hard explaining when I get to the other side.

Quickly, here are a few things I remember about George.  I'll just rattle them off, in present-tense, for whenever I think back, I'm there: 

• A girl in our writing class makes a comment about how she thinks God is a woman.  George leans over to me, "I think God is a trucker from Milwaukee."  That's a great title.  I decide to go home and write the poem.
• I'm arguing with a customer at Jiffy Copies and George walks in, quietly listening to the two of us escalate.  After the customer leaves, George says, "You know, if I were your boss, I'd fire your ass right now."  I'm furious.  The woman was trying to get us to pay for her mistake.  She was lying.  I let George know this, my volume quickly rising again.  George calmly says, "It's better to lose money over one job, no matter how much, than to send her out into the world angry the way you just did.  You might as well try to collect your wages from every other copy store in town because she will spend the rest of her life sending business their way, so yeah, I'd fire your ass in a heartbeat."  As he is a successful entrepreneur with ten or twelve employees  at the age most people are finishing up college, I grudgingly accept his authority.   It just makes me want to slug him, although I know I'd lose the fist fight that would ensue.  
• George calls me up, says, "Hey, the magazines are all bound.  We don't have to do that now.  I just got El Paso Independent School District to bind them for free.  I was delivering a job to their print shop at closing and asked if they'd mind staying after hours to do a job for us if I supplied the beer.  It's done."  The magazine he's talking about is the second edition of our magazine, Sell-Outs Literary Magazine, which we started together,  on one of his whims. The first edition sucked--mainly because of my lack of editing skills--but the second one, in my opinion, holds up.  And El Paso Independent School District bound it, without their knowledge, for free!   I feel slightly guilty; yet, his subversive tactic makes me smile.  I also know, that although not legal, strictly speaking, he was fair.  There was a reason those employees were willing to stay after hours. Although George said it was for beer, I know it was because of much more.  I know he got them out of some bind, probably multiple times, that made them want to return a favor.  George used good deeds as currency.  No need to worry about taxes that way. 

Although I remember many specific moments with George, there are many more moments that I don't remember.  I spent far too many late nights over at his house drinking and talking about God and life to remember the specifics.  Sometimes it was just George and I.  Sometimes my brother Lloyd was there.  Sometimes George's best friend Mike was there also.  We never came to any conclusions or solved any problems, either for us individually or for society, but we sure had a hell of a good time trying.

Sometimes it was more than fun.  Sometimes it was an unspoken lifeline.  When either of our worlds were unravelling, we'd just show up in front of the other.  It was usually over our mutual inability to date women successfully, but not always.  Often George just wanted to play hooky from work.  That amused me, since he was his own boss.  He'd say things like, "I just need to get on a plane and fly to New York?"  I'd ask why New York.  "Because it's as far as I can get away from this damn place (meaning his company) without leaving the United States."   Not willing to go through the hassle of catching a flight, we'd head out into the desert instead.  Although George often had to drive into Juarez for business, he was opposed to leaving the country.  The world outside the United States was a scary place to him.  The world inside the United States was scary enough.  The world outside his home, period, was a bit frightening.  He hated going in stores, restaurants, gas stations--pretty much anyplace with people.  So, we drank at his house.  His world was his mind and his living room floor.  He'd sit on the carpet, his back resting against the couch, a can of Skoal by his side, a glass of Bacardi and Coke in hand.  He'd drink, dip, spit, and say, "You know, I don't think anyone knows what the hell's going on here."

In fact, he was going to write a book.  The title was to be: "What the F___ is Going On?"  He was going to interview people from all walks of life, simply ask them that question, and let them respond.  He'd ask entrepreneurs, philosophers, theologians, writers, scientists, gas station attendants, waitresses, and so forth, and simply record their answers.  Had he went through with it, it probably would have been a national best seller.  However, fame is not what he was looking for.  He truly wanted an answer to that question.  Looking back, I realize many of my poems were inspired by George's search for the answer "I why? / Why I?" as my one professor, Dr. Emory Estes, phrased it.

George didn't directly trigger all those poems.  But that's what drew us together.  We were both searching for some explanation for existence, some sort of meaningful answer to, "Why are we here to experience so much beauty and pain, sometimes simultaneously?" 

God

Just a memo:
we don’t sleep.
John’s on the front step again,
2 a.m.,
Reading Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,
Pepto Bismol in hand.
Last night it was 1919.
Alice is in the living room,
fat foot on the coffee table
next to a bowl of popcorn and salsa.
She has nightmares about worms,
says she feels their warm, slimy softness
climb between her legs and nest.
She’s staying up to watch old war movies.
I go to bed and wire myself to John Lennon:
“God is a concept by which we measure our pain.
I’ll say it again
God is a concept by which we measure our pain.”
Anna stumbles in at 10 a.m.,
Says she feels like she’s tied
to the bumper of her jeep,
wine glass in hand,
headed for the wall along Canal Street.
“They’ll sift through the broken bottles,
spilled ash trays and piles of beer cans,
find me down there somewhere
below some boy
trying to get to God
the fast way.”

I no longer write memos to God.  Our relationship is a bit more personal now.  These days I pray.  Occasionally,  I even find myself open enough to hear a reply.   For better or worse, I no longer feel pain as deeply as I once did.  I'm not sure about George.  I do know this: the neighborhood children frequently knock on his door and ask his wife, Gabby, "Can George come out to play?"  And when they do, George drops whatever electrical experiment he's doing in his living room (to Gabby's relief), and goes out to play with kids who are not his own because life is simply too daunting to face alone.  Who knows, maybe he's even strapped prayers to a rocket for some kid who lost his mom at far too young of an age.  "How about we fire these prayers up in her direction, Billy?"  I don't know if this has actually ever happened.  However, I do know it's George's way.

References

Lennon, John. "God." John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band. By John Lennon. 1970.